Blazing back onto the radar with one of the most anticipated and long-awaited albums yet on Brainfeeder is SAMIYAM. Sam Baker's Album is 40 minutes of deviant listening pleasure, a series of woozy, off-center hip hop instrumentals drawing heavily on Baker's love of electronic funk but never obligated to it.Intensely detailed and carrying considerable emotional weight, this is not Rap Beats Vol. 2, but rather an album of fully realized tracks that stand on their own, knee-deep in the groove and bent to the side. Sludgy, chunky beats mesh with organic sounds and fractured stops and starts, all coming together like the pieces of a demented dream.SAMIYAM moved to Los Angeles from Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2006; in his short time on the West Coast he has become one of the city's most progressive and recognized producers, a man who has helped spearhead the revival of interest in instrumental hip hop music. His album Rap Beats Vol. 1 was the first release on the Brainfeeder label, and SAMIYAM's raw hip hop sound with a psychedelic edge and off-kilter beats could be called quintessential Brainfeeder style.